II.—Shooting, Riding, Driving, etc.
Boz declared in one of his Prefaces that he was so ignorant of country sports, that he could not attempt to deal with them in a story. Notwithstanding this protest, he has given us a couple of shooting scenes which show much experience of that form of field sports. There is a tone of sympathy and freshness, a keen enjoyment of going forth in the morning, which proves that he himself had taken part in such things. Rook-shooting was then an enjoyable sport, and Boz was probably thinking of the rooks at Cobham, where he had no
doubt hovered round the party when a lad. As we know, Mr. Tupman, who was a mere looker-on, was “peppered” by his friend Winkle, a difficult thing to understand, as Winkle must have been firing high into the trees, and if he hit his friend at all, would have done so with much more severity. The persons who were in serious danger from Mr. Winkle’s gun were the boys in the trees, and we may wonder that one, at least, was not shot dead. But the whole is so pleasantly described as to give one a perfect envie to go out and shoot rooks. There are some delightful touches, such as Mr. Pickwick’s alarm about the climbing boys, “for he was not quite certain that the distress in the agricultural interest, might not have compelled the small boys attached to the soil to earn a precarious and hazardous existence by making marks of themselves for inexperienced sportsmen.” And again, “the boy shouted and shook a branch with a nest on it. Half-a-dozen young rooks in violent conversation flew out to ask what the matter was.” Does not this bring the whole scene before us.
The other shooting scene is near Bury St. Edmunds—on Sir Geoffrey Manning’s grounds—on September 1st, 1830, or 1827, whichever Boz pleases, when “many a young partridge who strutted complacently among the stubble with all his finical coxcombry of youth, and many an older one who watched his levity out of his little, round eye with the contemptuous air of a bird of wisdom and experience, alike unconscious of their approaching doom, basked in the fresh morning air with lively and blithesome feelings, and, a few hours later, were laid low upon the earth.” Here we have the beginning of that delightful fashion of Dickens’s, which he later carried to such perfection, of associating human feelings and associations with the animal creation, and also inanimate objects.
Everything connected with “the shooting” is admirably touched: The old, experienced “shot,” Wardle; the keepers and their boys; the dogs; the sham amateurs; the carrying of the guns “reversed arms, like privates at a funeral.” Mr. Winkle “flashed and blazed and smoked away without producing any material results; at one time expending his charge in mid-air, and at others sending it skimming along so near the surface of the ground as to place the lives of the
two dogs on a rather uncertain and precarious tenure. ‘What’s the matter with the dogs’ legs? How queer they’re standing!’ whispered Mr. Winkle. ‘Hush, can’t you! Don’t you see they are making a point?’ said Wardle. ‘Making a point?’ said Mr. Winkle, glaring about him, as if he expected to discern some particular beauty in the landscape which the sagacious animals were calling special attention to. ‘What are they pointing at?’ ‘Keep your eyes open,’ said Wardle, not heeding the question in the excitement of the moment. ‘Now then.’” How natural and humorous is all this.
This was partridge shooting, “old style”—delightful and inspiriting, as all have felt who have shared in it. Now we have “drives” on a vast scale; then you would follow the birds from field to field “marking them down.” I myself with an urchin, a dog, and a single-barrelled old gun have thus followed a few precious birds from field to field all the day and secured them at the last. That was true enjoyment.